A Sickness

I wish the first 7 minutes of this video didn't ring so true with me, but they do. I can't help myself.




There is no need for you to watch the rest of the video, but if you have time I recommend it.

A Word on Sequestration

Dear employees of the federal government,

       Really, this is nothing personal. We know you have families, and mortgages, bills, hopes, and aspirations for retirement just like the rest of us. However,  you had to have seen this coming. Your employer (good old Uncle Sam) has over spent. Wait... that doesn't seem quite accurate- your employer has GROSSLY  OVERSPENT! (still not adequate, but it will have to do) and he hasn't blown trillions on good things most of the time either. He has spent money on conflicts, bail-outs, hand-outs, studying and saving the endangered Moapa Dace, and a whole host of things most people would find upsetting. Trillions has been spent with little to show for it. I mean, I could understand the debt, to a point, if our infrastructure was up to date instead of crumbling, or if public eduction worked, or, or, or.... but that doesn't appear to be the case. It is unrealistic to assume that your employer can make the spending cuts he needs to and still keep employing all14 million + of you that he thinks there are (he's not real sure how many people he employs). So once again, please don't take this personally. We'd love to have you over here in the private sector. For those of you who went and got an education and training that is completely useless outside of government employment, you can always go get training or schooling more applicable to the world the rest of us all live in. Is it inconvenient? Yes. Will it be hard? I'm sure it will be. However, life is hard. You may not be handed a pension after working for a whole 20 years. You may not get benefits. You may not have the security of knowing you won't be fired no matter how bad you are at doing your job. The rest of us deal with all these issues and since we're the ones paying into the system we are sorry but you're fired.

A Couple Things To Discuss

First off, the Jeep is history. The only other employee of the engineering firm I work for had a Toyota Tacoma for a work vehicle and I asked him if wanted to trade. He asked why and I told him that I detested the thing. He responded with, "sure, I don't care what I drive." I spent at least 30 minutes trying to convince him that simply couldn't be the case, that he had to care what he drove to some extent. He was unmoved on this point so I gave up and we swapped keys.

While I'm no real fan of Toyota products I do enjoy this truck exponentially more than that clap-trap of a Chrysler product that I was driving before. It's a 4 cylinder with a manual transmission and 4WD. This is the first car I've used with Bluetooth and I must say it is quite handy.



In other news, this:

The Ely Stake YSA group had a temple trip to St. George last weekend and Megan and I (well just Megan) called Aunt Millie to come and join us. Yes, that is her waving at the camera. We had a fun visit. She is always a hoot.